Why is marguerite of valois referred to as queen margot

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What Viennot brings back into perspective is her own agency in a wider arena. Renaissance culture seemed most comfortable when representations of women did not veer substantially from ideals.

Marguerite's situation rendered this impossible. Primogeniture demanded family subservience to the eldest son. That two of Catherine de' Medici's sons died young shifted the wind, but the queen mother tried to steer a steady course. Princesses marry foreign princes for strategic alliances, often between states in conflict.

Implicit is the expectation that they resettle in their husband's kingdom, as Marguerite's older sisters did. In the absence of legitimate male heirs from her brothers, however, Marguerite was to marry the Bourbon heir presumptive to the French throne.

New, however, was the fact that Navarre, Marguerite's intended, was Protestant. Birth families expected daughters to mediate between families, and royal women were successful diplomats in both official and unacknowledged ways. Saint Louis, the Capetian king, a symbol of justice, Joan of Arc, warrior and martyr, and Henry IV, the great peacemaker, are three unmistakable paragons who personified a certain idea of French greatness. Certainly, Marguerite of Valois — had such a singular and surprising life that it could hardly fail to capture the interest of later generations.

Marguerite was five years old when her father, Henry II, died of a lance wound to the eye sustained at a joust. This marked the beginning of the end for the House of Valois. Her eldest son, Francis II, married Mary Stuart and died at the age of sixteen, a year and five months after ascending the throne. The second eldest, Charles IX, became king at age ten and died without legitimate issue at age twenty-three, leaving the crown to his younger brother, Henry III, who had neither the requisite wisdom nor the strength to exert any sort of authority over a nation riven by hatred between Catholics and Protestants.

Henry III died childless. One might have hoped that the marriage of Marguerite—sister to the three kings—to her Huguenot cousin Henry of Navarre in would bring about a reconciliation between the two religious factions.

Pulled first to one side then the other in the years that followed, she took part in various plots but was ultimately spurned by both sides. She then took refuge in a fortress in Auvergne, in central France, where she lived for almost twenty years in a state of internal exile that looked very much like captivity. The assassination of her sole surviving brother, Henry III, in , set off the final crisis. In the absence of a direct heir, the crown fell to Henry of Navarre.

But the civil war raged unabated. The new king was forced to fight on for another four years before he was able to enter his own capital city.

Henry IV had conquered the throne and was crowned king in Now he needed to put his conjugal affairs in order. His marriage with Marguerite had produced no offspring. That outcome was hardly surprising given the lack of physical attraction between husband and wife and the infrequency with which they shared the same bed. Now, however, they were in agreement on one crucial point: their marriage had to be dissolved.

The annulment would allow the king, already the father of a multitude of illegitimate children, to establish a lineage. Thereupon, in what was perhaps the most astonishing phase of her career, instead of fading away Queen Marguerite experienced twenty years of veritable splendor. Once the marriage was dissolved, the ex-spouses became the best of friends. The new queen, Marie, was inexperienced.

It was said she was awkward and ignorant. So Henry IV asked Marguerite to teach her the customs of the court. Since he valued her skill in projecting the image of royal dignity and wished to show her the greatest marks of respect, he also entrusted her with responsibility for receiving ambassadors: in short, she once again had an important position at court and, even more surprising, she became an intimate of the royal family.

Marguerite was a pawn in this game of the highest possible stakes. Not that she was passive. The first indication of her cast of mind was an attempt to marry Henri, Duke of Guise. She was so badly beaten that her clothes were torn and ruined. Instead she married her cousin Henri, Prince of Navarre. Reconciliation was needed. Tens of thousands of French had died so far in the fighting which was punctuated by peace treaties which never held. It was not her fault that war returned every time.

The entrenched hostility of the ultra-Catholic Guise to peace lay partly — largely? The Bourbon-Valois marriage was dynastic.